I have been wanting to make summer rolls since I helped Joe make a batch at his house. I was planning to try the veganomicon recipe that used roasted butternut squash, but I couldn’t face turning the oven on. Doing some google research on friday afternoon I found an excellent post on tigersandstrawberries with a lot of helpful hints and some great ideas. The rolls are easy to make once you assemble all the ingredients, but you do have to be careful because the wrappers can tear, especially if you overfill them.
My fillings were:
thin rice noodles
carrot strips (made with a vegetable peeler)
julienne cucumber (skinned and seeded)
chives, mint, basil and cilantro
bean sprouts
scrambled tofu (extra firm tofu, crumbled and fried with sesame oil and some chilli powder)
sesame seeds
and a squeeze of lime
For the sauce you can go a couple of ways. Some use hoisin sauce but I couldn’t be bothered to buy anything else so mine was:
about half a cup of chunky peanut butter
a tablespoon chopped fresh ginger
a fresh serrano pepper (despite the salmonella scare)
1/2-1 cup of hot water
2tbsp tamari (soy sauce)
3tbsp rice vinegar
2 tbsp mirin
juice of half a lime
tsp of agave syrup.
I whizzed it up in the food processor and then chilled it for a while.
I added some chopped roasted unsalted peanuts to the sauce before serving.
I think it could have done with more chili in the sauce and I probably should have put more of the mint and basil in the rolls. Stored in tupperware with wet paper towels they kept well for 2 days without drying out.
